The insurance business is an underrated occupation and it isn’t always the first one to come to mind as a lifetime job. Wendy Folmar may be the exception to that.

She has spent most of her adult life in the insurance business and looks on it as the perfect job for her.

“My main focus was to find a job that would help me to be able to contribute to our income,” she said. “I grew up in Lenox and attended school in Repton. Right after graduating in 1994 from Monroe County, I got married and within the year had given birth to my only child, Katie, who is now 22 years old. Everybody said we would never make it because of our youth, bur we fooled them and Joel and I are still together.”

Folmar said they were young and didn’t have a lot of money to spend on the family.

“I worked at several jobs over the next few years,” she said. “One was in an eye doctor’s office and a patient suggested I try the insurance business. She told me that I should call Stuart Richeson, the State Farm agent in Monroe County. I did call him. In fact I called him over and over again. Maybe he just got tired of me calling all the time so finally he told me to come in for an interview. I had no college education so i had to start at the bottom. I became a team member and worked there for 10 years.”

According to Folmar, insurance is very important in everyone’s life, but sometimes they don’t realize just how important it really is.

“People buy insurance sometimes just because they have to have it,” she said. “We are required to have insurance on our homes and vehicles, but it is so much more. People don’t like to think about the future and the things that could wreck their lives. I believe all insurance is important, but life insurance is my main job. When my own mother died, she died without enough insurance to cover everything.

“I highly recommend that people buy life insurance because, lets face it..we are all going to die someday, even thought we don’t want to think about it. We need to be prepared for that day. I understand how people feel and I want to be able to help them prepare for whatever comes along for the need of insurance in their lives.”

After she had been on the job for a while, she heard that Wilodyn Frazier, the agent in Brewton, was retiring. She had to go through a lot of training in Thomasville and in Atlanta, Ga.

“State Farm has many kinds of insurance and customers like to be informed as to what we can do for them,” she said. “We are able to finance through our own bank and hopefully, we will be able to soon offer health insurance too.

“I enjoy making people’s dreams come true and giving them what they really want or need. Lots of people don’t know just what they really need and I want to be able to help them. Lots of people don’t think farther than their retirement, but they need to realize that most of them will live maybe years after retirement. We can help them with that.”

When she is not working at State Farm, Folmar said she loves to get her hands in the dirt taking care of flowers. She also likes to shop for antiques.

“I don’t always buy, but I love to shop,” she said.

“God can do anything, but you need to be ready and go down the road He has prepared for you. If we do that, our lives are so much fuller.”